DRUG ADS COULD TRIGGER TOKERS

Do anti-pot ads just make folks want to spark up? Health Minister Tony
Clement better find out before he launches that no-nonsense anti-drug
campaign he's been threatening.

"Canada has not run a serious or significant anti-drug campaign for
almost 20 years," Clement sniffed at a speech to the Canadian Medical
Association last month.

But now he's ready with a multi-departmental two-year $64 mil effort
involving Health Canada , the Department of Justice and maybe even the
prime minister's office . The multi-pronged initiative includes a
crackdown on gangs and illicit drug production as well as money for
treatment. And, says Christian Girouard, spokesperson for the
Department of Justice , there's $10 million for "preventing illicit
drug use." According to Clement, these measures would include public
health messages -- namely, an ad blitz, part of the "plain truth"
Clement wants young people to hear.

Problem is, anti-drug media campaigns have been a flaming flop south
of the border, and maybe even an actual incentive to
pot-puffing.

In 1998, the U.S. kicked off its five-year National Youth Anti-Drug
Media Campaign aimed at scaring kids away from drugs, particularly
weed, with a series of TV ads linking casual marijuana use to
terrorism, sexual violence and unplanned pregnancies.

But the U.S. 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported that
while past-month drug use among 12-to-17-year-old Americans had
declined slightly (from 11.6 per cent in 2002 to 9.9 per cent in 05),
it was rock-steady among 18-to-25-year-olds (20.2 per cent in 2002
versus 20.1 per cent in 05).

An August 2006 report by the United States Government Accountability
Office (GAO) sounded a similar alarm. The Anti-Drug Media Campaign
"was not effective in reducing youth drug use," states the report,
which goes on to recommend that Congress stop funding the program.

But it was the work of Dr. Harvey Ginsburg and Maria Czyzewska, of the
psychology department at Texas State University in San Marcos that
reached the most stunning conclusion. "Our preliminary study revealed
that college students generated more negative comments to televised
anti-marijuana ads than anti-tobacco ads, often perceiving them as
exaggerated and unbelievable," Ginsburg writes in a report published
May 2006.

More than that, students in their study reported that the pot spots
actually made them more likely to spliff up.

Ginsburg tells NOW this is called the "boomerang effect," a phenomenon
that occurs when "the message is perceived as weak, inconsistent with
prior knowledge and when the source's credibility is suspect," he
writes. He says he hopes the Canadian government treads carefully.

The feds can't say they weren't warned.